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Big Sur: A breathtaking, costly isolation

The approach to Bixby Bridge in Big Sur along California Highway 1. (Photo: Jingjits Photography)

The stunning region was slammed by storms last winter resulting in multiple landslides and a bridge failure that have largely isolated the region for six months. Now there are just two ways in south of where the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge was demolished — take a rugged half-mile trail in, then take a shuttle or rent an electric bike, or make a lengthy detour in from U.S Highway 101.

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Brown hits San Diego, Faulconer hits Sacramento

Gov. Brown speaks at a San Diego employer forum. (Photo: Adriana Heldiz, Voice of San Diego)

In the nearly seven years he’s been governor, Jerry Brown’s been frank about why he’s supported bold criminal justice reform, like Prop. 57, the 2016 ballot measure that, among other things, offers sentence credits to inmates who take advantage of rehabilitative programming. “I helped screw things up, but I helped unscrew things,” he said Friday at a forum put on by the California Prison Industry Authority, the state agency that provides work assignments and job training for state prisoners.

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Brown’s commutations: A journey through violence, redemption

A cell block at Folsom Prison. Photo: Grace2Grow

The stories behind Gov. Jerry Brown’s nine recent sentence commutations reveal tangled lives marked by murder, abuse, addiction and determined efforts by criminals — usually over decades — to turn their lives around. Here are their stories.

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Pension woes cloud small fire district

A San Francisco fire truck and crew prepare for duty.(Photo: Shutterstock)

A worried Herald Fire Protection District board discussed the possibility last week that the fee for leaving CalPERS may be around $400,000, an amount some members fear could push the small district in southern Sacramento County into bankruptcy. Earlier this month, Transparent California reported that the suburban Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District has 216 retirees receiving annual pensions of $100,000 or more, and a dozen of those are $200,000, or more.

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California faces major physician shortage

Doctors confer in the lobby of a busy hospital. (Photo: Monkey Business Images, via Shutterstock)

California is facing a primary care physician shortage, and one of the only solutions to address it is sitting on the edge of a fiscal cliff.  The Teaching Health Center program, which places new resident physicians in underserved communities, will lose federal funding unless Congress acts to reauthorize it by Sept. 30.

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CalPERS steps up on climate change

CalPERS headquarters, downtown Sacramento. (Photo: CalPERS)

CalPERS is a leader in forming a first-ever global alliance of large investors that would use its combined shareholder clout to engage companies with the most carbon emissions, believed by scientists to contribute to climate change. The CalPERS board was told last week that its staff is working with others to complete the plan in time for an introduction at a United Nations investor meeting next month in Berlin, followed by a public launch in November at a UN climate change meeting in Bonn.

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From global warming to redistricting: Is Arnold back?

Former Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, followed by French officials, at a 2014 meeting in Paris targeting climate change. (Photo: Frederic Legrand, COMEO, via Shutterstock)

It was ‘way back in 1984 when Arnold Schwarzenegger first uttered the movie catchwords “I’ll be back” in The Terminator. Today, Arnold is back. Sort of. Now, through his Terminate Gerrymandering Crowdpac, Schwarzenegger has committed to match donations to a fund that will help Common Cause participate in a case before the Supreme Court challenging maps drawn by Wisconsin Republicans. He’s into other things, as well.

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Johnson & Johnson hit with record damages in California cancer case

Screen capture image, via YouTube.

Los Angeles jury has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay damages of $417 million to a 62-year-old woman who blamed her ovarian cancer on years of using the company’s baby powder for feminine hygiene. It was the first California trial in the mushrooming legal battle over links between genital use of talc and ovarian cancer, and the award against J&J on Monday was by far the largest so far.

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Hepatitis C Virus outbreak among millennials

Laboratory testing of HCV. (Photo: Jarun Ontakrai, via Shutterstock)

Millennials haven’t inherited the best batch of goods from baby boomers. They got a housing crisis, a shaky job market, and some enormous student loans. But until recently, viral hepatitis was the burden of boomers alone to bear. Now, millennials are also facing an outbreak of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV). 

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Capitol Weekly’s Top 100: Shari McHugh

80. Shari McHugh

Shari McHugh is a partner at McHugh Koepke Padron Government Relations, a lobbying firm she runs with her husband Gavin. With just four lobbyists on staff, the firm serves more than 40 diverse (and noteworthy) clients, including the American Beverage Association, California Life, the California Correctional Peace officers Association, Koch Government Affairs,

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